Icon Shock: The Go To Resource For Stock Icons

By Author: Philip A Jameson
Total Articles: 1
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Icons have been an effective way to communicate ideas from the beginnings of human civilization. Websites have used icons to ornament and provide visual aid to visitors so they can identify link locations, familiarize with the site and in consequence connect with the brand it represents. In order to maintain uniformity in style and presentation, stock icon sets have become handy to achieve this integration goal. However, there are rarely free options that permit commercial use, and usually quality suffers when looking for affordable solutions.

Icon Shock ( www.iconshock.com ) stands out in a crowded icon design landscape because of its enormous size, offering an enormous variety of stock icons approaching 1,200,000 as of this writing, with the collection growing at a rate of 3000 icons per week. This great amount of stock icons is distributed over an also big variety of sets: over 300 sets are available for clients to find the ones that cover their needs the best. Another great plus is the affordability of the sets; even if you just want to try out the icons before a purchase, you ...
... have the possibility of getting icon sets for free, with no restriction on commercial use more than an attribution requirement.

Visiting the website will display a navigation bar at the top to help locate the different features available. The first link is called "All our icons"; there all sets can be browsed between all the styles offered, separated by family. The second link, "Custom design", showcases custom designs that have been offered to clients wanting to use a unique design to fit their needs. "Testimonials", as the name says, collects opinions from satisfied customers that have enjoyed the company's services and the usefulness they have found for the stock icons on their projects. There is a "Contact Us" form that allows communication with the designers for any inquiries that may appear. It is possible to find individual icons for purchase in the "Icon library" if your interest is just using a specific group of icons; however, due to the affordability of the sets, you will get an even greater value getting a whole set that will provide you a great variety of stock icons to choose from. You may also read the "Blog" section to keep up to date with the new icon sets and so you can keep your collection updated, as well as learning more about the design process. Finally, the "Community" section keeps clients connected, giving an adequate space for cooperation in a forum format.

Keeping in mind that quantity not always equals quality, the craftsmanship at Icon Shock reflects the great dedication that has been put in creating these icons, providing icons as big as 512px and as small as 16px. Big sizes are achieved thanks to the vector design implemented, with the Adobe Illustrator source files being included to further scale and modify icons if needed. For small icons, in order to preserve detail and avoid blurriness, icons are handmade pixel by pixel, yet another demonstration of the great care designers at Icon Shock place to provide a quality product.

Clients will be pleased by the extensive presentation of each set; each of the icons in the collection are shown so the former can get what they expect, in addition a detailed description showing the different icon sizes and the inclusion of different colorings and file formats.

In some sets it is possible to get a free version that includes all the icons in a subset of resolutions, making them suitable for personal use, with the exceptional addition that the license for these free sets also allows commercial use with attribution. This is a great advantage for startups that want to enrich their content quickly, and as they grow they will also connect more clients to the benefits of using Icon Shock. For most sets, samples are available so clients can try out how the different designs blend with their works. PDF samples are also available so they can be printed or shared with other clients for evaluation before deciding on an investment.

When visiting a set, browsing for similar ones is facilitated by the inclusion of related sets at the bottom of the description; be it from a similar style or theme. Say, for example, that you are looking for networking-themed icons; when selecting the Real Vista Networking set you can see other sets in the Real Vista collection, providing an extended design language for other purposes, or when needing a new style that combines better with the visual structure that you may have projected.

For clients wanting to use different styles for the same theme, in order to adapt to the ever-changing trends or provide theming for their websites, bundles can be obtained with the same affordability and flexibility that identifies the experience at Icon Shock.

Sets start at just $19, depending on the amount of icons and category they are from. Icons cover a great array of categories, including technology, occupations, business, entertainment, people, design and more. Icons provided have styles ranging from flat and minimalistic to 3D and glossy, looking to cater a wide audience. It is even possible to get the full collection of over a million icons available as of this writing for just $199, showing an unprecedented value for designers wanting to use an extremely wide array stock icons for different projects they may develop.

Source inclusion is a very unique feature that is given with any set purchased, especially at the price points offered; it allows a deeper opportunity for modification and improvement of designs to suit the user's needs with the inherent scalability of vector design. Icon Shock even encourages the modification of purchased sets; that sense of freedom is something other stock icon offerings should look forward.

In short, Icon Shock is poised to become an important resource for designers wanting to get quality stock icons with a huge variety to choose from, with a very affordable pricing. As more and more prospective clients get to know the benefits and features the service offers, one can just expect for it to keep improving and to establish itself as a central hub to supply the ever-growing graphic needs of the web.